“You had left something behind you, perhaps? A handkerchief?”
“No, I don’t leave things behind me. I wear a dress the colour of the carpet and specially suited for quick, athletic movement. It has no pockets in it. I’m not sure if you’d call it a dress at all. The thing was simplicity itself. I had warned my husband against it before. The carpet has a long thick pile. When anybody crawls across a carpet of that kind they leave a trail that it does not take an Indian to discover. Dr. Morning chanced to think of that, and saw that the trail led directly under the sofa. He began this morning by saying to me, ‘If you will not let me see the room on the other side of this wall, the whole thing is a swindle, and I shall give Mr. Holding my reasons for thinking so.’ I tried to bluster it out. The game was lost, but I might at any rate have managed to put a good face on it. Unfortunately, my husband came in. He’d been drinking. It was too awful, and——”
Here Mrs. Dentry collapsed suddenly and burst into tears.
It is not very easy to be severe with a woman who is crying because her husband is a blackguard and she is a failure. I, at any rate, am not clever enough for it. Before she went she gave me some curious scraps of her personal history. She and her husband had always been, and still were, firm believers in spiritualism. When she wrote down the fall of the stock about which Mr. Holding was inquiring, she was convinced that her hand was really controlled. In order to make a living though, and to attract the public, more was required than could legitimately be obtained. It was necessary to supplement. This struck me as a nice euphemism.
I gave a sigh of relief when she had gone. I was glad to be quit of that business.
VI
UNREWARDED
As I have already explained, my adventures with the spiritualists were more interesting than remunerative. I contrasted rather bitterly my light-hearted start upon my career in London and my present condition. It had seemed so simple to forsake the usual futile and ill-paid lines of women’s work and to find a new and better way for myself. I had found nothing. It was due more to my luck than my judgment that I was not already at the end of my resources. As it was they were fast dwindling.
Every day I made a point of going out into the stimulating life of crowded London streets. Somewhere in them I felt that I should find my chance. Amid so much that was happening there would be some circumstance that I could use to my profit. I trained myself to observe. Whether it was by day or by night that I had taken my walk I always sat down on my return and reviewed in my mind what I had seen and wondered whether there were anything that I could turn to account.
One morning after breakfast, as I picked up my newspaper, my eye fell on an announcement that a lady had lost a pug-dog and would pay one guinea for his restoration. It seemed to me queer that I had never thought of this before. Why should I not find things and get rewards? Pug-dogs at a guinea a time did not represent wealth, but there were more serious losses that brought higher rewards. The same paper provided me with an instance. On the evening of the 20th inst., in or near Erciston Square, West, Lady Meskell had lost a pearl necklace. A description of it was appended and a reward of four hundred pounds was offered.